Being fully rational requires taking stock of the whole. To focus exclusively on good (or bad) is to make a partial judgment. To deny the Enlightenment's responsibility for anything bad after, say, 1750 while giving it credit for everything good thereafter is a double standard.
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But, look, the conversation went there because some people were questioning that. And saying that some of our evolved moral sentiments are enough to expand morality.
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Well, they're all we have. We can only do morality to the extent that we conceive of morality & this has been shaped by our evolution as social mammals. It's a human thing tho some other social mammals share rudimentary forms of empathy, reciprocity, fairness etc.
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Yes, it's true. But you also have to choose among them to conduct yourself. That's why you have "the better angels of our nature". You also have the worse angels of our nature. So, you can't just follow them indiscriminately.
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That's what the discussions are for, yes. Was anyone arguing for following them indiscriminately? I thought the difference was over whether our evolved morality was enough to explain why we set moral premises & then seek facts about how to implement them.
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Of course our evolved morality is enough for that. But then you have reason and other cognitive processes, and morality is more than just a evolved moral sense + scientific facts to inform it. Even though it's also that, of course.
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Yes, of course. Is anyone arguing otherwise? Let's clarify: Are you arguing that human moral values come from anywhere other than human brains & their evolved capacities expressed through language and mediated in groups in relation to other humans & things in the environment?
End of conversation
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Well, Sam Harris sometimes seems not to appreciate it, as did Michael Shermer a couple of weeks ago. But I'll duck out before this thread turns into a melee.
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No, I don't think so. Not in the Moral Landscape, anyway. He gives a rationale for the premise of prioritising the wellbeing of conscious creatures in that this is a pancultural human priority but he still sets a premise.
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Exactly! There's a premise. And it's not derived from scientific facts themselves. It's a matter of values.
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But these come from our brains, right? You're not calling the fact that we have moral brains something which can't explain why we have moral values?
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Yes, they come from our brains. Again, nothing metaphysical, no ghost in the machine, no soul, no nothing of that.
End of conversation
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